Abstract || This paper examines the rhetorical repertoire and morphology of self-help books. Drawing on Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot‘s investigations on the forms of spirituality in the Western tradition, this article traces the genre‘s configuration in the late modern and contemporary periods, and proposes two essentials characteristics: the psychagogic function of its discourse and the existence of a canon or “framework of sense” which readers have to apply in their self-transformation through an ensemble of techniques of the self-provided by the text.